During last years web analytics conference in London, eMetrics 2010, keynote speaker Jim Sterne proclaimed that a web analytics professional potentially could become what the CFO is to the CEO: a trusted advisor with unique insight to business performance giving the management a solid foundation for them to base their decisions on.
The concept is spot on – with more and more companies and organizations directing more of their efforts, resources and focus on the performance in the web channel, they will be looking for answers on their performance. Or, as modern business people would put it, their Return on Investment.
The challenge
Being web analytics professionals we have a vast array of tools for providing them with data. We have a countless number of reports with all kinds of metrics and visitor statistics. We know what browsers our visitors are using, what time of the week we can expect the traffic peaks, the relation between new and returning visitors and how many visitors that complete our order forms.
This, however, is where the analogy between the web analytic and the CFO halts to a stop for most web analytics.
The one major challenge that web analytics professionals must face is the burning question: “How can we translate our data into business value?“.
When the CEO steps into the CFO’s office, the CFO will probably never go on about how many people has walked into the company building, what clothes they were wearing, at what time, how much time they spent there and how many of them that read the brochures laid out on the reception counter.
A good CFO will give the CEO everything he needs to know about how the business is going presented in a format that the CEO can use when he is presenting to the board, with numbers that represent the core business performance. The CFO speaks a language that the CEO understands, his reports are tailored to meet the CEOs needs and the CEO can act on these data.
And that’s the web analytics chasm right there – the distance between the metrics provided to us by the tools we are using and the lack of ability to provide answers to the real important question: “How do we perform from a business perspective?”. Put short, we struggle to deliver valuable information to the people who rely on us to help them make the right decisions.
So what can we do?
First off we have to realize that the data we have access to is not interesting unless the right pieces of it gets presented in a relevant context. That means we need to tailor KPIs to the management in our organization where there’s a clear connection between what’s happening on the web and the high level strategic goals for our business. There should be no need to provide a manual with our KPIs or to educate the management team so that they can read our reports.
Reporting is more than just distributing KPI results – the numbers themselves are not the main attraction to our CEO, it’s what we do with them and how our actions affect them that matters. So to add value to the reports we need to provide an intelligent analysis together with the data we present.
At some point in the organization, the management measures business performance across the different divisions and departments. As a web analytics professional, you need to apply your analytics skills in order to align the web metrics with these goals.
Learn the difference between “Performance Indicators” and “Key Performance Indicators” and make your reports relevant, crystal clear and easy to understand. Share successes and fails both alike and use your analytical insight to improve actual business performance.